For the first time, two of the three principal network evening-news shows will have women as solo anchors: Sawyer at ABC and Katie Couric at CBS — with Brian Williams holding up the Y chromosome at NBC.

For Sawyer, who turns 64 on Tuesday, the anchor chair caps a remarkable sequence of opportunities. She landed her first TV job in the 1960s as a reporter and weather presenter for WLKY, then ABC's local affiliate.

Sawyer, a native of Glasgow, Kentucky who grew up in Louisville, will turn 64 on Tuesday.

Before taking the lead in the popular ABC Evening World News, Sawyer is the co-anchor of ABC's 'Good Morning America'.

The popular TV News anchor, whose father was a judge and a former Republican politician, had her early education in Louisville where she attended Seneca High School.

In 1967, she received a bachelor of arts degree with a major in English from Wellesley College in Wellesley, Massachusetts. She attended one semester of law school at the University of Louisville before turning to journalism.

Diane Sawyer had a brief stint at the White House during the Nixon administration. She later worked with the former president when he left office. In 1978, Sawyer joined CBS News as a political correspondent and became a co-anchor, with Bill Kurtis, of the CBS Morning News in 1981. In 1984, she became a correspondent for 60 Minutes, a CBS News investigative television news magazine; she remained for five years.

In 1989, she moved to ABC News to co-anchor Primetime Live, a news magazine with Sam Donaldson. From 1998 to 2000, she would become a co-anchor for ABC's 20/20, also a news magazine, co-anchoring on Wednesdays with Donaldson and on Sundays with Barbara Walters.